History

Intent

Our intention at St. Joseph’s is to provide a broad and balanced view of the past through the teaching of History. We aim to balance wider world topics with British history and build on prior historical knowledge by following a spiral curriculum; ensuring key historical skills are revisited throughout the Key Stages. Through the topics covered, we want our children to have a good understanding of social cohesion, linking the past (events of WWII for example) to the present day, contextualising learning and making it relevant. Our school curriculum sets out the knowledge and skills that pupils will gain at each stage.  It is clear what end points the curriculum is building towards and what children need to know and be able to do to reach those end points.

Implementation

We teach History in accordance with the National Curriculum.  We want our high-quality history education to help our children gain a coherent knowledge and understanding of Britain’s past and that of the wider world. We want it to inspire pupils’ curiosity to know more about the past. Our teaching equips our children to ask perceptive questions, build a chronological framework, make comparisons across time periods, understand the cause of significant events and understand their consequences as well as scrutinising the validity of evidence and relating history to their own lives.

At the beginning of all units, children will look back at time periods studied previously. This encourages them to build on their chronological framework and see every unit in the wider context of time. In history, children are taught the same historical skills throughout the school but the skills are applied to a variety of different time eriods.  Our children are encouraged to ask a variety of questions on one particular subject whether that be a piece of evidence, an event or the time period in general.  History topics begin with enquiry questions with the aim being that at the end of each topic, all children can answer these key questions. Pupils are taught a six week block of History once a term with the exception of Year 1 and Year 6.

Impact

Outcomes in History books evidence a broad and balanced history curriculum and demonstrate the children’s acquisition of identified key knowledge. Emphasis is placed on analytical thinking and questioning and children demonstrate a coherent knowledge and understanding of Britain’s past and that of the wider world, in addition to being curious to know more about the past. Through this study, our children ask perceptive questions, think critically, weigh evidence, sift arguments, and develop perspective and judgement.

Children will:

• Know more, remember more and understand more about History.
• Understand and use the key skills of chronological understanding.
• Gain knowledge and understanding of events in the past, historical interpretation, Historical enquiry and organisation and communication.
• Achieve age related expectations in History.
• Children will learn lessons from history to influence the decisions they make in their lives in the future.